Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Soft on the wave the oars at distance sound,
The night-breeze sighing through the leafy spray,
With gentle whisper murmurs all around,
Breathes on the placid sea, and dies away.
As sleeps the Moon upon her cloudless height,
And the swoln spring-tide heaves beneath the light,
Slow lingering on the solitary shore

Along the dewy path my steps I bend,
Lonely to yon forsaken fane descend,
To muse on youth's wild dreams amid the ruins hoar.

II

Within the shelter'd center of the aisle,
Beneath the ash whose growth romantic spreads
Its foliage trembling o'er the funeral pile,
And all around a deeper darkness sheds;
While through yon arch, where the thick ivy twines,
Bright on the silver'd tow'r the moon-beam shines,
And the grey cloyster's roofless length illumes,
Upon the mossy stone I lie reclin'd,
And to a visionary world resign'd,
Call the pale spectres forth from the forgotten tombs.

III

Spirits! the desolated wreck that haunt,
Who frequent by the village maiden seen,

When sudden shouts at eve the wanderer daunt,
And shapeless shadows sweep along the green;
And ye, in midnight horrors heard to yell
Round the destroyer of the holy cell,
With interdictions dread of boding sound;
Who, when he prowl'd the rifled walls among,
Prone on his brow the massy fragment flung;—
Come from your viewless caves, and tread this hallow'd ground!

IV

How oft, when homeward forc'd, at day's dim close,
In youth, as bending back I mournful stood
Fix'd on the fav'rite spot, where first arose
The pointed ruin peeping o'er the wood;
Methought I heard upon the passing wind
Melodious sounds in solemn chorus join'd,

Echoing the chaunted vesper's peaceful note,
Oft through the veil of night's descending cloud,
Saw gleaming far the visionary croud
Down the deep vaulted aisle in long procession float.

V

But now; no more the gleaming forms appear,
Within their graves at rest the fathers sleep;
And not a sound comes to the wistful ear,
Save the low murmur of the tranquil deep:
Or from the grass that in luxuriant pride
Waves o'er yon eastern window's sculptur'd side,
The dew-drops bursting on the fretted stone:
While faintly from the distant coppice heard,
The music of the melancholy bird
Trills to the silent heav'n a sweetly-plaintive moan.

VI

Farewell, delightful dreams, that charm'd my youth!
Farewell th'aërïal note, the shadowy train!

Now while this shrine inspires sublimer truth,
While cloyster'd echo breathes a solemn strain,
In the deep stillness of the midnight hour,
Wisdom shall curb wild fancy's magic pow'r,
And as with life's gay dawn th'illusions cease,
Though from the heart steal forth a sigh profound;
Here Resignation o'er its secret wound
Shall pour the lenient balm that sooths the soul to peace.

This alludes to a circumstance recorded in Grose's Antiquities, and still believed in the neighbourhood.